Here's a fun idea for Valentine's Day for your team. Send Valentine cards to your downline, but write it from their businesses.

If your downline's business was a person, it would probably be one of the people she spends the most time with. It would certainly be someone she has a love-hate relationship with. Let her business remind her of the love side of the relationship.

Write the message as if her business is a person she's dating and match the tone to the level of the relationship. So if it's new, keep it light and airy but hopeful for a future. If the relationship is getting serious (i.e. she is working towards leadership), make the message a little more serious.

Your message just needs to be three sentences, and the good news is that one of them can be Happy Valentine's Day.

Here are prompts to help you for the other two sentences:

a compliment

hope or a wish for the future

the journey they've taken

challenge they've overcome

Examples of what it looks like for a new business relationship:

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm so glad that we found each other, and I hope you're having as much fun getting to know me as I am getting to know you. I can't wait to see where we go together.

So, we've been hanging around each other for a while now, and I'd love it if you'd be my Valentine. I promise to always be there for you, and I'll drop everything whenever you want to spend time with me.

Examples of messages for an established relationship:

Happy Valentine's Day. I love us. I love how much we've grown together and how you bring out the best in me. I can't wait to walk across stage together.

My Valentine gift to you this year is a promise. I promise that if you spend time with me, I'll do everything I can to take you on the incentive trip. Imagine the fun we'll have there and how much stronger we'll be working towards it.

Your downline will probably figure out that you're the one who wrote it, but it will still be fun for her. And who knows, it might help her fall a little bit more in love with her business.

A Valentine is the perfect card to use in your direct sales business to connect with and to celebrate someone. It can be a teammate, a customer or a peer. When we were kids, we gave Valentines to every kid in the class. We didn't worry that someone might think we're being too pushy. We were just concerned that the cutest ones went to our favorite people.

So think like a 3rd grader. Send a Valentine to everyone. And if your list of "everyone" is too long, prioritize your list and start at the top.

Here's a suggested prioritization:

Leaders on your team

First line

Aspiring leaders on your team

Team members who are actively working their businesses

All team members

Potential recruits

Past and booked hostesses

Excellent customers

You only need to write 3 sentences. That's not hard especially when one of them can be Happy Valentine's Day.

Here are some prompts for other sentences for your team notes:

Compliment on her business

Compliment on her personally

Hope or wish for her future

Congratulations on achievement or overcoming a hurdle

Here is what that could look like:

Happy Valentine's Day! Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of you and how far you've come in your business. Your consistency and perseverance is paying off. This is going to be your best year yet!

Happy Valentine's Day. I'm so glad that you're part of the team. Your love of the product and willingness to help is a tremendous asset to all of us and to your business.

Happy Valentine's Day! You put your heart and soul into your business, and I know your team and customers are very blessed to have you. You are an inspiration.

Prompts for sending cards to your customers could include:

Thanking her for her support

Complement

Here is an example of a note to a customer:

Happy Valentine's Day! Thank you for supporting my business and for being a joy to work with. You are one of the reasons I love my job so much.

Here is the important thing to remember when you're sending a business Valentine--you can't ask for anything in return. You're just wishing her a happy Valentine's Day. You aren't asking her to sell more or to come to a training. You aren't asking her to buy anything, host anything or join your team. You are just letting her know you appreciate her. It's a note to connect and to celebrate.

Galentine's Day is a real thing. It's a fun holiday where you celebrate your favorite girlfriends. Ideally you'll get together with them for brunch like Leslie Knope, the founder of Galentine's Day, suggests. But if you can't do that, celebrate them by sending them a card.

Here are some ideas of what to say in the card.

Things you love about her.

A compliment.

A favorite memory of her.

An inside joke.

An invitation.

A thank you.

A wish for her.

Three sentences is enough.The whole message can focus on one of the above prompts, or you can use three of the prompts and write a sentence about each.

Here are some examples of what this looks like (and these may or may not have been taken directly from Galentines I sent).

Happy Galentine's Day! I'm excited for your new role as Nana. If I got to pick a grandmother, I'd want one as cool as you.

I'm so lucky to have you as a Galentine. No one tells a story like you do, and your chocolate cake is to die for. I hope we can have a proper Galentine celebration soon.

Happy Galentine's Day! I'm so proud of you. You're handling your new life with a confident and adventurous heart. I'm excited to see what this year hold for you.

I'm so honored to have you as a Galentine. When I think of who are my funniest friends, you're on the top of the list. And when I think of who are my wisest friends, you're on the top of that list. You're also on the top of the weirdest friends, but that could possibly be a result of the unusual combination of being on the other two lists.

Happy Galentine's Day. Remember that picnic we had at the lake in high school when we laughed so much we peed in our pants? We should do that again soon.

Happy Galentine's Day! I can't believe we've been friends for over 30 years.Thanks for all the late phone calls, free babysitting and lunch dates. Thanks for all the other stuff that I can't write so that we both have plausible deniability. Looking forward to 30 more years of shenanigans.

Happy Galentine's Day! Our friendship is the best thing about working at ABC. You are better than caffeine, break room snacks and Secret Santa. Don't ever quit, but if you do, take me with you.

Those should give you a good starting point about what to say in your cards to your Galentines this year. And the best part about Galentines is that it is sort of a made up holiday which means you can celebrate it any time of the year. So if you're super wrapped up in your Valentine plans, know that it is perfectly acceptable to send a Galentine this summer.

My Heart Beats Valentine and Galentine cards save you time and money. When you buy a Valentine card at the store, it usually has a sentiment in the inside. You might have to read racks of cards to find the one that expresses the message you want to convey in a tone that matches the relationship you have with the recipient. But when you send a My Heart Beats card, you just have to pick the design, and you get to write the perfect sentiment in the card.

So what do you write in a Valentine card? I'm a big believer in the 3-sentence note because it works for just about every card-writing occasion.

To your spouse:Happy Valentine's Day. I love everything about you, but I especially love your sense of humor, your kindness and your mad handyman skills. Every year I feel closer to you, and I look forward to many more Valentine celebrations with you.

Sign it however you want.

To a partner in a semi-serious relationship that you haven't used the L-word with:So . . . I was wondering, if you'd be my Valentine. You are fearless and fun, and sometimes a little bit crazy, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't wait for our next adventure.

Alternative signature options if you're still not ready to use the L-word include: XOXO (or just one XO), Your Valentine, Fondly, SWAK.

For a new relationship:Happy Valentine's Day! I'm so glad that Susie introduced us because it's been really fun hanging out with you. Cheers to more fun to come.

Signature options are and of the above or just your first initial. It's intimate and mysterious.

You can make the card light and airy or deep and serious. You don't have to leave it at 3-sentences. You can certainly go into more detail on the person's personality or your relationship. I probably wouldn't do much more in the the 3rd example if you want the relationship to progress.

Top 3 - 10 ListOr you can abandon the 3-sentence structure and do a top 3-10 list of why you want the person to be your Valentine. If you make it humorous, you can slip in some mushy stuff without making it weird. That might look like this:

Top 5 Reasons I Want You To Be My Valentine:1. You make me laugh until I pee (this is also doubling as a true confession card).2. You know some of my deepest secrets and still want to hang out with me.3. You drive a cool car, and there is no one else I'd want to spend hours with in a confined space.4. You like, or at least will eat, my cooking.5. You bring out the best in me.

Whatever you write, remember that it will be read over and over again. No pressure. Contact me if you need help.

Remember Valentine celebrations back in elementary school? We covered shoe boxes with construction paper and turn them into mailboxes. A snow day before Valentine's Day was spent sorting through the set of cards we got so that our favorite people would get the cutest ones. If we were really ambitious, we made our own Valentines.

You can relive those days in a more grown-up way with our Box of Love. It has two different designs of both Valentine and Galentine cards. You get two of each design for a total of eight cards. Which isn't as many as you got in your elementary set, but now you don't have to send one to every classmate. So eight is probably enough.

Each card is blank inside and has a design on the front and a definition of the holiday on the back. They are 4.25" x 5.5" and come with envelopes so that you can mail them to your loves all over the world.

It comes in a handy dandy folder that you can use to store them for next year if you're super selective about your love list. And you'll get a chart to keep track of which cards you sent to each Valentine so that you don't accidentally send anyone the same card in 2020.

The designs are casual enough to send to your best girlfriends, teammates and new relationships, and sophisticated enough to send to the love of your life. They are blank inside and ready for your special sentiment. And at just $2.50/card, they are a bargain.

If you're a leader on a direct sales team, you can send them to your aspiring leaders, superstars, goal crushers, emerging business developers, peers and uplines. Moms can send them to their kids.

They are an excellent way to reconnect with old classmates. You know, the people you made sure got the cutest cards from the Strawberry Shortcake Pack. Who knows, you might even rekindle a best friendship.

Use the Galentine cards for your girlfriends and daughters. Use the Valentine cards for all the men on your list and for the ladies who are more traditional.